This invention relates in general to bearings and in particular to a new and useful resilient bearing construction employing inner and outer metallic sleeves and an intermediate elastic material therebetween.
Bearings of this kind are intended particularly for pivoting the radius arm of motor vehicles. Such a bearing must take up by its resilient body shearing forces produced by the oscillatory movements of the wheels and compensate for vibrations caused at the apparently constant speed of the vehicle. The bearing, however, is also to control the roll steer effect of the vehicle while negotiating and with a varying load, to counteract the tendency of oversteering. One bearing of this kind is known from German OS No. 28 38 391. In this prior art design, a rubber body is clamped between an outer and an inner metallic sleeve and bonded thereto by vulcanization. To obtain the sought positive guidance of the universal movements under load, the walls of the two sleeves enclosing the rubber body taper obliquely to the axis of the bearing, so that under acting axial forces, the sleeves are positively radially displaced relative to each other in a predetermined direction. With a corresponding adjustment of the joints of the two radius arm members, this may ensure the desired pivoting of the members. To obtain this effect, this prior art design requires irregular shapes of the metallic sleeves and of the rubber body, or even a plurality of such irregular rubber bodies in a single bearing. The result is that a bearing having a specific shape and a relatively large size must be provided in every specific application.